Honestly, May has been surprisingly good for a number of reasons. My sales of books have increased (not dramatically, but definitely increased!), the novel I’m plugging away at is almost half finished (I’m hoping to hit that halfway mark either tonight or tomorrow night), and I’ve done a few things outside of the house that I wasn’t completely terrified by.
So, you know, small steps, but good steps! It’s nice to be able to look at things and see some positives in there.
Today I have a full day of writing ahead of me, aside from a quick trip to the bike shop to get a new helmet (the one I have is too small, tragically… I bought it at the beginning of the season, hoping that it would fit better than it does). And I love days like this. I have ideas I want to put on the page, and the only thing stopping me is updating all of you on that fact! So I’m going to get at it!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Birthdays!
Not mine, granted, but that’s okay because I very much dislike my own birthday. It’s a long story, not worth going into, but the net result is that while I hate my own birthday, I very much enjoy other people’s! And today is a birthday of somebody very special to me, so we’re going to go out and celebrate.
With llamas.
Technically, with alpacas. Which aren’t llamas, but look a little like them. Either way, there’s a farm nearby that does a catered lunch in the same area that the alpacas are, and it sounds really wonderful so the two of us are going to do that today. And then after that, I will probably try to write another chapter in the novel… I hit 30K words yesterday, and I have an idea of how I want the next two chapters to proceed.
So all in all, it should be a very good day!
Hope everyone is staying safe and healthy!
A Third Done!
Approximately 1/3 of the way finished the novel! Woo! I feel pretty good about where the story is right now, although I do have some little concerns about the pace. It starts big, but for the last few chapters its been much more slow-burn rather than super exciting. Thankfully, on a bike ride yesterday, I thought of a way to help with that, and today I’m going to be writing that part into chapters 11 and 12.
Other than that, not a lot to report. I can’t believe we’re almost to June already… the year feels like it’s slipping away faster than ever before. I guess that’s sort of a side-effect of getting older. When I was young the days seemed to last forever. These days it feels like by the time I’m out of bed it’s almost time to go to bed.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Opportunity Cost
I am not a successful person. There are certainly things I have accomplished (I’ve written a bunch of books!), but by and large, I think I have been remarkably unsuccessful at life. At this point in my existence on this speck of dust suspended on a sunbeam, I thought I would be more settled, more content, more… accomplished.
I don’t need a fortune, and I have certainly never needed fame. I don’t need a lot of people to recognize who I am… I’d like to aspire to Scalzi-levels of recognition (people who know the specific genre that I write in might know who I am, but even then many do not), but I don’t need even a significant fraction of that to be happy. I’m not aiming for the stars nor the moon. Just a bit higher than I am today.
Sadly, it hasn’t happened yet, and I am starting to worry if it ever will. Stuff is hard and is only going to get harder as time goes on. Ah well. Nothing I can do about that except keep trying. Maybe someday things will get easier?
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Long Weekend!
Ah, a few glorious days off… which, for me, has no impact whatsoever. Writers don’t, as a general rule, get “days off.” There are days I write, and then there are days I should write.
Oversimplification, of course, but I can’t think of a day in the last six years that I didn’t wish I was writing in addition to or instead of whatever I was doing. I spent 10 wonderful days in Japan, and I wrote all ten of them! It was great! I wish I could do that more!
But still, days like today give me a chance to do some chores around the house, finish off a few lingering tasks, do some tidying up and throwing out of stuff. I’m a big fan of that, in general.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
A Third of the Way!
Last night I hit the 33% point in my first draft. It’s a good feeling! Even better, I was thinking about the story all day, and that’s always a good sign. The pieces of how things will be told are falling into place in a very satisfying way.
The scene that I’m writing right now is a formal dinner between several starship captains. Every time I write a scene like this I’m always reminded of Herbert’s Dune, specifically the scene where Paul is at a dinner his father is hosting and he looks around at all the diners. It’s a fascinating bit of writing in many ways, and while I never try to emulate it, I am always comparing myself to it.
To contrast that, I suppose, would be the way Martin handles feasts in A Game of Thrones. Martin is obviously more interested in the sweeping politics and machinations, but he takes a considerable amount of time to describe each dish, each location. And while I’m not the biggest fan of Martin, I will admit that the Red Wedding is one of those scenes that was written so perfectly that I will never forget it. For better or for worse, Martin knows how to write a dinner!
I don’t think the meal I’m writing about right now will hit either of those lofty comparisons, but that’s okay! I’m enjoying writing the tension, the suspicion, and the confusion of the protagonist at exactly what is (or might be!) going on. It’s a very satisfying feeling… plus I get to think about Space Food, and that’s always fun!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
The Curse of Fine Weather
So site traffic is down again. Every Spring this seems to happen… and I can’t say I blame people! The weather outside is lovely, the weather inside hasn’t improved, so why not go out and enjoy the sun while it lasts?
Except me. I hate the outdoors as a general rule. Saw too much of it when I was young and now I’d rather stay inside 99% of the time. Outside has wasps, which I’m allergic to, and mosquitos, which I hate, and it gets really cold, which sucks. Inside is where my games are and my computer is! Much better inside.
But I totally get that other people want to go outside and enjoy the sun! So you do you. I’m gonna go write about people who are happy staying inside a small metal can hurtling through space for months on end.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Delicious, Delicious Progress
There are a lot of things I love about being a writer. I love the feeling of creating a world, of telling a story that has never existed (in the way I write it, at least) before, of getting to know the characters and places as the story unfolds. Each page I learn more, and I always want to share that.
By the same token, the best feeling is when everything is flowing. Words leap from my brain unto the page (which, granted, need to be heavily edited and trimmed later), and scenes and conversations play out easily and quickly. It’s not always this way, of course… there are days where each word is like pushing your arm through a meat-grinder. But when it flows, gosh it’s a feeling like no other.
These last few days have been those kind of days. I sit down, blink, and somehow three or four thousand words have been added to my first draft. It’s wonderful!
The real trick is to ride this wave as long as I can, and then afterwards to be able to acknowledge that just because it flowed easily doesn’t make it good. Lots of editing later!
But for now lots of writing is really, really delicious!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
The Silliness of Space Opera
I write in a fundamentally absurd genre. Both sci-fi and fantasy have this problem… they hinge on the impossible. In the space opera I’m writing now, faster-than-light travel “works” following very specific rules, but there are all sorts of silly things that I have to lampshade or hand-wave away to get to that point. Relativity, gravity, acceleration, mass-thrust ratios… I know about all these things, and I could sit down and crunch the numbers (and sometimes I do), but it doesn’t make the story better if I do. In fact, it often detracts from the story… Star Wars isn’t a great space opera because we know how lightsabers work. In fact, in most of the main-canon material it’s barely mentioned, aside from the fact that they aren’t trivial sorts of things to own or make.
Star Trek puts a bit more effort into the explaining of technobabble, but not a lot. It’s still, for the most part, “ships go zoom because of magic”. And that’s fine! By establishing the tech/magic early, and the bounds of it, we (the author and the audience) can focus on the stuff that actually makes the stories cool: the human elements. The relationships and stresses and the examination of society through a future lens that both highlights our present and outlines a possible future.
You know. The “fi” part of sci-fi.
Anyway. I’m wading my way through a mountain of technobabble at the moment, establishing the rules for the universe in a way that my readers can quickly grasp them without having to spell them out. Scalzi spells out the rules sometimes by directed breaking of the 4th wall in his “Collapsing Empire” series, and he does that really well, and I freely admit that I’m borrowing heavily from his work in a few key areas. But I haven’t broken that wall just yet… maybe it would be simpler if I did? I’ll think about it, but for now I’m enjoying breaking several laws of physics.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
A Good Head of Steam
Yesterday wasn’t one of my official “writing days.” I have three of those a week (Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays) where I try to get most, if not all, of my words in.
But yesterday I got home and felt like I had a few thousand words in me… so I sat down and hammered out a chapter. Now, it’s rough, but that’s okay! That’s the point of a first draft… get all the words lined up one after another and then fix it all later. I’m really curious to see where I will end up adding more details… the worlds and cities I have described so far have been more like sketches rather than fully-fledged illustrations of the places in my mind. Again, that’s okay, I can add detail later.
But the point is that yesterday I basically wrote another chapter on a day I wasn’t expecting to write anything. And that felt really good. I love this part of the writing process (admittedly, I love many parts of the writing process!), when the ideas are all jumbled up in my brain and just waiting to get out. It feels good. It feels like I’m doing what I’m meant to be doing.
On that note, I’m going to go do what I’m meant to be doing, and write another couple chapters!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
The Trouble with Seat-of-Pantsing
I’m sure I’ve written it here before, but I’m fundamentally a “seat of the pants” writer most of the time. I’ve forced myself to get into the habit of writing outlines (and to take notes on characters as I write), but the majority of my work doesn’t start until I sit down to actually write the novel.
This is the opposite of somebody like, say, a Sanderson or a Martin, who need to have extensive notes and thorough plots before they start. Martin couldn’t keep all his characters straight, nor weave the intricate political machinations that he does, otherwise. And this isn’t a judgement… I really enjoy Sanderson and Martin! They have their faults, but so do all writers, and it shouldn’t detract from the things they do well. Martin in particular has a gift for naming multiple characters with the same name (which, let’s be honest, happens way more often in real life than it ever does in fiction) but still keep them distinct. Usually you know which Rob Stark is which!
My method (and the method of many writers much better than me… it’s not “my” method, it’s just the method I use!) allows for more spontaneity and surprise, both for me and for my audience, most of the time. But it requires way more work in editing. A really satisfying “sudden but inevitable” element to a book means that when you realize the “ah ha!” moment, you then have to go back and seed leading hints towards that moment throughout the work. And as much as I love writing, I’m not crazy about editing. It’s necessary, and I do a pretty okay job at it (and I have a professional editor who does a great job at it!), but most of the time I just want to write something else, rather than spending my time editing what I’ve already written.
These are the things I think about as I start a new novel (I mean, I’m on Chapter 5 at this point, but it’s still pretty early on). Have I left myself enough room that I can come back and add in the details I will later need? Is my story already too front-loaded… a constant threat when one writes sci-fi and you just want to spend three chapters describing all the cool tech and neat cultural shifts in your new galaxy.
Ah well. One nice thing about writing is that I can worry about all that later. For now, I’m just going to write my story!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
The Best Thing
It’s nice to be writing. It’s really nice to be looking forward to writing… in the Tao of Pooh (a book I read when quite young that has managed to lodge itself in my mind rather firmly), Winnie the Pooh describes the best thing in the world as not eating honey, but the moment before you eat the honey. The anticipation of eating something you know you’re going to enjoy. Writing for me is like that… I love writing, but the best feeling in the world is the moment before you start writing. The moment when all the plot threads and hooks and characters are swirling around in my head, jostling each other to be the first out and on the page. That’s a feeling unlike any other.
So I wake up most days with the buzz of anticipation that I get to write later in the day (even if “later” is sometimes quite early, like today!). And the words are falling in line for me right now. I' just finished Chapter 3 and am steaming on to Chapter 4 already… with some luck I might hit the halfway point of the novel (first draft, obvi) by the middle of the month. That would be fantastic. So we’ll see if I can maintain this lovely pace!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
One Hacker Later...
Somebody managed to break into my Paypal account. Partially my fault because I use human-level passwords (numbers and words, as opposed to more-secure gibberish), but still a tonne of work to undo the damage wrought.
Thankfully, not expensive damage, because that would ruin me, but still a lot of work to try and tighten up my online security. Two-factor authentication, lots of new passwords that are longer and more complicated… a lot of work in a lot of places online, and by no means did I get everywhere. But I tried, and hopefully I got the important ones.
Still, that tied up a lot of time I would’ve much rather spent on writing, so I have some catching up to do! But the new novel is coming along nicely (I’m about midway through Chapter 3 at this point), and it feels good to be writing, rather than just planning on writing or thinking about writing. Sure, there’s a bunch of stuff in my life that’s really hard right now, but at least I can still put fingers-to-keyboard and produce something. That feels good.
Now, examining how long this degree that I’ve been working on is still going to take… that does not feel good. But I have a few months before I really have to start worrying about that.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
A New Short Story!
You can find it over on the Short Stories page, but I’ll put a link right here as well. It’s just a silly thing I cranked out for a buddy who plays Battletech, a tabletop stompy robot game. Most people don’t need justifications for why your little plastic army dolls are smashing into each other… but I am not most people.
The story itself is pretty short… just under three pages when I initially wrote it, I think, but I admit to pouring way more time and energy into making sure I got the timeline and details as correct as possible. I kinda like doing that… making fiction that fits within the confines of existing structures. It takes more work, sure, but at the same time it’s satisfying. I think that to some extent that’s because I used to write fanfic (I suspect all writers did at some point!), and it just feels… natural?
Anyway. A little story if you happen to be familiar with the Fourth Succession War period from Battletech. And if not… hey, a little political story that happens to lead into big stompy robots punching each other!
Hope everyone is staying safe and healthy!
The Artist "Problem"
There are no shortages of problems with being an artist. Your work tends to be undervalued, the amount of time and effort required is massive, the rejection is constant and unrelenting…
Somebody once said that “If you want to be a writer and can be anything else, be something else. Only be a writer if there is no other choice for you,” (I’m paraphrasing), and I kind of agree with that. I have to write. I’m miserable when I’m not writing. But by the same token, it’s a very hard road to travel.
But one of the problems I find I’m constantly running into is the desire to do all the things. Like, I have scripts I want to write, short movies I want to shoot, models I want to paint, music I want to practice and play… my desire to create far outstrips my time to do so. And so I am constantly balancing compromises… a few hours of writing followed by a few hours of painting followed by a few hours of playing music, and then back to writing and so on. There is always a dozen projects on the go.
Right now the novel takes priority, because it has simply been too long since I’ve published one and that’s unacceptable. But just because it’s the priority doesn’t mean I’m not doing everything else at the same time… and sure, I’m trying not to start more projects at the moment, but it’s just a question of time before I start another one!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
The Numbers Game
While I was studying to be a scientist, and in the decade that followed when I was working full time in R&D, a lot of my life was devoted to numbers. Big numbers, small numbers… often extremely small numbers, like my paycheck… numbers were kind of what I “did.”
These days its words, which, I’ll be honest, feels a lot better. But even these days there are very important numbers that I follow. How many sales a day, how many sales a month, how many visitors to this here website a week… all numbers, and watching their upwards and downwards trends is interesting if, I’ll admit, not terribly exciting. I live in the realm of small numbers… a few extra visitors on a given day can result in big changes for my monthly views because, frankly, I don’t get that many on average.
I mention this only because the last week has been a definite lull. My sales are rarely double-digits a day, but they are pretty consistently a few sales daily… but none for the last week and a half. And I don’t know why… I suppose in many places the weather is getting nicer, and maybe there is a general downturn in book purchases when the sun is shining? Just a guess.
Hopefully not a long-lived trend! I need those book sales to do little things like “eat” and “have a place to live.” Small, but important things!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Universe Building for Dummies 101
One of my favourite elements of writing a new series is the initial world-building… or, as is often the case in sci-fi, galaxy (or even universe!) building. It’s always an interesting experience to sit down and to try and think how a society operating with just one or two key technological differences might be radically different from ours.
In The Hunt for the Wind’s Howling Rage, this was all about the economy. In a galaxy where all basic needs are met but there is still a capitalistic system underpinning it, what could conceivably be “currency”? My answer there was spice, since I wanted to go with a Caribbean-flair to the adventure that Cici and Mina were on, and from that I decided that all planets were seeded with identical foodstock, but only a few spices could grow in isolated locations, creating an entire spice-trading economy… and the story flowed outwards from there. In contrast, for Starconvoy EH-76, I needed to figure out a way to get submarines in space (hey, if the Trek in the Stars can do it, so can I!), and that led to the entire conflict between the two mighty star empires that forms the foundation of Griff’s voyage. And so on.
For the novel that I’m writing on right now (the working title is The Trojan Stars, but I don’t think I’ll be sticking with it… maybe, but we’ll see), the big thing is figuring out how the FTL interstellar drive works in such a way to produce important strategic points without requiring a lot of fiddly details. Becky Chambers does a fantastic job with this problem in The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet, providing a reason for the heroes’ voyage but also a technological foundation that makes the story just sing. It’s a remarkably feat, and while I don’t think I can do it quite that well, I do love the time I spend wrangling my brain to make all the blocks line up in a satisfying way.
So, that’s my work for today! Finish up the universe building (again… I did it a few weeks back before I went into exams, but managed to lose the file to a power outage… sloppy on my part. Always back up your work constantly, people!), and then diving back into writing Chapter 1!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Back to Writing!
Okay, with that my last exam for the semester, and correspondingly my last course until Fall, is over! Woo!
I think I did okay, but whether I did well or not, there’s nothing I can do about it now. It’s in the books, it’s done, it’s finito. Huzzah. Let the celebrations begin!
Honestly, I’m mostly looking forward to getting back to writing more enthusiastically (as opposed to my current method of writing, which I would describe as “desperately”). I have a bunch of ideas I want to work out, and it’ll be nice to have to time to actually work on them!
So, here’s to another semester down, and to being several steps closer to graduating. If everything goes as planned, I should be finished with Laurier in early 2024! Fingers crossed!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
After These Messages...
It’s strange the kinds of things that get lodged in your brain. Like, that little jingle from when I was a very young child watching cartoons… “After these messages… we’ll be right back!”
Anyway, today is devoted to studying for my exam tomorrow. So I’ll be back on Thursday after the exam with progress on my next creative projects!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Studying for Exams
Honestly, I’ve always had a mixed appreciation for exams. On the one hand, I tend to do pretty well in tests. I have the kind of mind that can usually rationalize out a problem in a logical (although not always correct) way that will get me at least partial grades from my profs. Very useful.
On the other hand… what do exams really do? They don’t test retention of knowledge, or ability to process knowledge… they sort of test how much you know about a topic at this moment which, I suppose, is about the best you can hope for? Maybe school would be better if the emphasis was less on “did you learn this fact temporarily” and more on “can you use or understand whatever it is you learnt two, three, or seven years down the road.”
Of course, determining if that’s true or not… totally different issue. But the whole school-bribing scandal from a few years back shows that it doesn’t matter what your grades are (at all), nor does it determine if you will be good at a job or not. Many people paid to get into a school that nominally didn’t deserve to be there, but they ended up doing just as well (or better) than the students who “earned” their spots.
I don’t know. But I am happy that this is my last exam of the semester, and my last exam for a few months at least. My brain can use the rest from the usual school stuff for a bit.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!