{"id":6218,"date":"2011-10-11T01:24:37","date_gmt":"2011-10-11T07:24:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/?p=6218"},"modified":"2011-10-11T01:24:37","modified_gmt":"2011-10-11T07:24:37","slug":"coming-along-nicely","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/coming-along-nicely\/","title":{"rendered":"Coming along nicely"},"content":{"rendered":"

First things first: the latest post for the Bringing Stella Home<\/em> blog tour is up over at Michael Offut’s blog; you can find it here<\/a>.\u00a0 Michael asked me to blog about Brandon Sanderson’s English 318R class, so I recapped some of my experiences, including the best advice Brandon ever gave me.\u00a0 Go check it out!<\/p>\n

The revisions for Desert Stars<\/em> are coming along nicely.\u00a0 It’s funny; for the past three months, all I’ve wanted to do is work on this novel, but it turns out that taking a long break from it was probably the best thing I could have done.\u00a0 The distance has helped me to take a fresh look at my prose and cut out all the extra trimmings that were just bogging things down. For example:<\/p>\n

Draft 3.0<\/p>\n

Jalil paused before walking down the narrow aisle of the train, rows of lights tracing a pair of parallel lines down the dark blue carpeted floor. The place felt oddly familiar, and not just because of the similarities with the trains in Aliet Dome. In fact, this one was much smaller and narrower, so that he and Mira practically had to walk sideways just to get down the aisle. The seats all faced forward, too, instead of alternating like they had in Aliet Dome. And the way the interior of the cabin was curved like a pipe, so that the ceiling blended into the walls and floor–it brought back a memory of him staring out a window at a glowing blue horizon, with the sky dark and starless overhead.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Draft 4.0<\/p>\n

Jalil paused briefly in the door of the train, staring at the parallel rows of lights running down the dark blue carpet. The place felt oddly familiar, like something out of a dream. Perhaps it was the way he and Mira had to step sideways through the narrow aisle, or perhaps it was the way the walls of the cabin curved naturally into the ceiling and floor. It brought back a memory of him staring out a window at a glowing blue horizon, with the sky dark and starless overhead.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Just from simple stuff like this, I’ve cut almost 5k words so far; I wouldn’t be surprised if I get this baby down to 90k-95k by the end.\u00a0 Even though the story is pretty solid, the distance has helped me to take a fresh look at my prose.\u00a0 And hopefully, my writing has gotten better in the meantime.<\/p>\n

So Desert Stars<\/em> is coming along nicely.\u00a0 I plan to have this draft finished by October 21st, and publish it *hopefully* before Christmas.\u00a0 The main thing holding me back is funds; I’ll probably have to drop around $750 for editing and cover art, with maybe a month to get it put together in ebook form.<\/p>\n

So how to come up with $750 before the end of November?\u00a0 One possibility I’ve been toying with is doing a fundraiser like my friend Anthon did for his Danakil expedition.\u00a0 $5 would get a copy of the ebook with special mention in the acknowledgments, $10 would get that plus one or two other ebooks, $25 would get that plus all of my releases over the next 18 months, etc.\u00a0 Or something like that.\u00a0 If you’ve got any good ideas for the upper donation levels, please let me know.<\/p>\n

Once Desert Stars 4.0<\/em> is finished, I plan on jumping straight into Star Wanderers 0.3.<\/em>\u00a0 Heck, I’ll probably start that project tomorrow!\u00a0 After that, I’d like to do a companion novella for Desert Stars<\/em>.\u00a0 That shouldn’t take longer than a month.\u00a0 And don’t wory, I haven’t forgotten about Edenfall;<\/em> it’s kind of gotten pushed onto the back burner, but I fully intend to finish it at some point.\u00a0 If all goes well, it’ll be up and published before the end of next year. As if that wasn’t enough, the BSH blog tour is making me want to revisit the sequel, Into the Nebulous Deep.\u00a0 <\/em>I finished that project back in May, so it’s definitely had enough time to stew.\u00a0 And then there’s the New Rigel novel–gah!<\/p>\n

Okay, first things first: Desert Stars<\/em>, then Star Wanderers<\/em>, and while my first readers are working on that, I’ll write the DS companion novella.\u00a0 Once I’ve gotten back the feedback, I’ll revisit Star Wanderers,<\/em> submit the first part to Writers of the Future, and then finish the novel.\u00a0 That should keep me busy until Thanksgiving; anything after that, I’ll figure it out as it comes along.\u00a0 Oh, and some point in there, I need to find a new job.<\/p>\n

So much to write, so little time in which to write it.\u00a0 Fortunately, things are going very nicely right now; if that holds up, this is going to be a very productive month.<\/p>\n

\ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

First things first: the latest post for the Bringing Stella Home blog tour is up over at Michael Offut’s blog; you can find it here.\u00a0 Michael asked me to blog about Brandon Sanderson’s English 318R class, so I recapped some of my experiences, including the best advice Brandon ever gave me.\u00a0 Go check it out!… Continue reading Coming along nicely<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[68,44,460,857],"tags":[559,89,122,46,529,147,454,156,247],"class_list":["post-6218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bsh","category-ds","category-hn","category-sw","tag-blog-tour","tag-career-decisions","tag-friends","tag-goals-and-plans","tag-indie-publishing","tag-momentum","tag-productivity","tag-revising","tag-writers-of-the-future","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7iXK-1Ci","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6218"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6218\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6569,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6218\/revisions\/6569"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}