Aha! Writing Updates
“Marx Ignatia” is, for all intensive purposes, finished. I have to edit it, but I’ve reached the end, I think. I don’t know if it’s a good ending, but it’s done anyway. For those that don’t know, “Marx Ignatia” (the working title) was sort of inspired by another story called “Asher”, since the character of Marx Ignatia is mentioned in that story. So I finished it at 18,003 words and now intend to set it aside for a short while before going in to editing it. It’s a long piece, so I need a mental breather.Also, I’ve finished the first draft of “Interstellar Realty”, which may be the finished title, and it is off to be critiqued. I expect that story to go out at the end of the week.Now, to the pressing matter. I finished “Life of Jordan”, but it has a lot of problems that, unfortunately, have pushed it back and off of the planned submission to Writers of the Future. The story itself is fine, but there are bits where I obviously need to clarify or add things in order to make it work better and that poses a problem: I’m supposed to be removing words, not adding them. This means I may not be able to get “Life of Jordan” down to size and it may need to be submitted elsewhere. So, it’s been pushed out of the way since I need to get a story submitted to this quarter for WOTF. That means “Interstellar Realty” is going there, since I think it is a decent story. I enjoyed it so much, actually, that the little jokes made me laugh out loud.Anyway, so that’s the writing update for the time being. There’ll likely be another this weekend. I’ve got a lot of things cooking that have nothing to do with my writing, but do have to do with interviews and the like. So stay tuned!
Today Has Been…Special
I have been one heck of a trooper today. I set a lofty goal of 2,000 words a day, with an amendment that stated that if I was writing an essay or doing something school related I would be able to sidestep the writing, since my entire life and success depends on being able to hold a job that can pay off the student loans and otherwise give me a livelihood that will sustain me and keep me from going nuts and working at Burger King. Partially the point of going to school is to educate myself in things I don’t already know, which is working, and partially to secure a decent job that will, hopefully, make me happy. Now, of course I’d love to be one of those nice folks who write for a living, but I think a part of me knows that such things will never happen, and I can live with that. All writers should, by the way, because most writers never get to that point. Even some of the huge names in the field right now are barely scrounging from all the work they put into writing. John Scalzi is not rich by a long shot and is quite generous in sharing his financials (which, while much better than I have ever made in my short life, is certainly not the greatest income considering he works his butt off writing fiction and other stuff).Okay, that aside, I’ve been a trooper because I started the day feeling generally like crap, for no apparent reason, and with my mind attempting to contemplate what exactly I was going to do with the story currently entitled “To Paint Lords Green”, a fantasy short set in the same general world as “Irlgem”. I sat around talking to the girlfriend and came to the conclusion that whatever I was doing with that story wasn’t going to work the way I had intended and the idea I was working with was going to turn into something too large for my tastes (I wanted a story under 5,000 words, and that just wasn’t going to happen).So I spent hours feeling sort of horrible and then I had a spark of random inspiration and started writing this new SF story currently called “Interstellar Realty”. I don’t think that will be the final title, but it’s a humor piece and I’m loving it. It took a while to get through because there is something about humor for me that requires a little more in the thought process. Jokes are somewhat difficult to write I think, especially if you don’t want to come off sounding like one of the very few SF writers who tell jokes in their stories. So, it is now after eight in the evening and I have officially written 2,752 words, 49 of which were in “To Pain Lords Green” (yes, I counted those).Is “Interstellar Realty” finished? Nope. Is it close? I think so. It’s technically at a good closing point, but I want to write a little more to provide a better ending to it. One thing I learned about a story I wrote a while ago was that the ending left people a little unsatisfied, which was difficult to change and still is (I think I’ve figured it out though, so I may be writing that very soon). Basically I want the story to end on a high-note, which won’t be much more than 500 words I think. I could probably cram it into 300 without losing much. It all depends what bizarre stuff pops in my head. Just so you know, “Interstellar Realty” is basically a comedy piece about futuristic realty companies in a galaxy where humans have moved to other planets and the like (there are aliens thrown into the mix). It’s also a commentary on customer support services, which we all have probably had to deal with. I won’t say much more than that though, because it might ruin the story.Now, the story “Life of Jordan” that I’m working on is written. It comes in at around 17,600 words, which is 600 over the limits for Writers of the Future, so I have to trim it down. It’s not edited at the moment, but in a very raw state. Part of that is because I want to go through it, with help from the rather brilliant and writing conscious girlfriend (yes, she gives honest advice and sometimes it ticks me off, but she’s more often right than wrong about things related to writing), and find all the bits that really shouldn’t be there and drop them out now before doing the real edit (typos, sentence structure, etc.). The premise of that story is one where the world has fallen due to global warming and small, walled and guarded cities have sprung up and genetic manipulation has been used to alter children so they are homosexual to prevent overcrowding, leaving heterosexual people, in such communities, to be considered dangerous (and illegal). I’ve enjoyed writing it because it does deal with some interesting conflicts in today’s society and it does spring up the idea of what we might one day do to solve our population problems.So, that’s where it all stands, basically. I’m doing a lot of writing and hopefully by the end of the next week I will have two more stories polished and ready to go out (“Life of Jordan” to Writers of the Future and “Interstellar Realty” to…somewhere). Exciting. Now I’m exhausted, so I’m going to go read and clear my head. Somewhere in there I’ll eat food.
Book Review Up: Ten Sigmas by Paul Melko
My review of Ten Sigmas & Other Unlikelihoods is up at F & SF Lovin’ Book Reviews. Check it out here. This is one hell of a short story collection and I highly recommend it to anyone who likes SF shorts, and even to people who might not read that much in the short department. Great read! Also, on a side note, I have Ch. 4 almost read for SoD. I’m going to start editing it tonight. I’ve been working really hard on a story for the second quarter of the WOTF Contest, so SoD was pushed to the side a little. The chapter is written, I just need to give it a good run through. More action will be coming in Ch. 5 and then there should be quite a bit of action from that point on (the sort of silly fun of the third storyline with Presh will probably end by Ch. 7 and then it will be crazy city). Ch. 4 will be up by Wednesday, if not sooner. Thanks for the patience. (Don’t click the read more, there isn’t any more after this)
And She Flaps Her Wings Like Annoyance
The evil School Faerie decided she wanted to be quite the little pest today. I just saw an email for my British Canon class saying that my TA wants everyone to have a full, six-page first draft of our final essays for the course by tomorrow for class (11:00 AM). I find that rather annoying. The email was sent on the 17th, but it still seems rather ridiculous for me to write a rough draft. I understand that for some people rough drafts (for essays) is really helpful. It’s not for me. It never has been. That’s not to say I’m smarter than other people, it just means I use a different process. I don’t write good essays when I think ahead. And to be honest, when I write this essay and do this draft, I’ll likely not touch it again until the day before the real essay is due. I don’t like doing drafts. It forces me to think too far ahead of time and I like the pressure of having to churn out an essay in 48 hours rather than 336 (or 2 weeks).So the overall result of having to do this rough draft is that I will learn nothing from the process of peer review in class. Here are my concerns over peer review in a college setting (at least in this case): First, it’s a COMPLETE draft. Not a partial. We’re expected to bring a fully realized idea to a peer review workshop for a DRAFT. If it’s a complete draft, why do we need a peer review for it? That’s like saying “I’d like you to write, but not put much thought into it, and then spend hours editing”. For me, this is like destroying the creative process. I’m going to bring six pages of this paper in, all completed, and then be expected to go back and do significant edits on it. When I write a paper, I write it to be finished with it. I don’t write drafts. I never have written a draft and miraculously I do remarkably well on essays. Go figure. The draft process is useless to me. Peer review in a classroom setting has NO value to anyone except in the following instances: Someone with considerably better writing skills gives opinions to some of lesser skills, which means that the person of lesser skill learns a great deal, but the person of greater skill gets shafted. People of relatively equal skill all help one another.This is the underlying problem with peer review in the classroom. People are not all of the same skill, nor do they all go through the same process. I might get stuck with a bunch of people that don’t know what they are doing, or don’t fully understand, or whatever. Generally this is pretty common, as I’ve been in other peer review groups before. What happened in those groups? They told me some things were wrong, and when I didn’t change them and turned the essay in anyway I got an A. What did I learn? I learned not to listen to people in classroom peer review groups because they haven’t offered me anything worthwhile. That’s not to say they can’t be useful to someone else, but the whole premise of peer review in classrooms for essays just doesn’t work for me. I’m going to talk to the TA or professor about my paper anyway, so why am I going to bother with students who likely won’t be able to help me? The TA even expects me to speak to him to make sure to solidify my idea. I don’t like this obsession with peer review for essays. I’m not writing to please the students, but to please the TA or professor. If I were trying to please a wide audience of people I would likely write differently, but there is a set formula to writing college level essays, even if there doesn’t seem to be, and I write within that formula and get my good grades. That’s it. Now, having said these things I feel like I need to clarify. I’m not saying I’m smarter or better than other people in the class or in any class. Far from it, actually. I’m saying that for me the process of writing rough drafts for peer review is pointless. I don’t work that way and never have. In fact, if I look back on my history of essays there is actually a legit reason for me to dislike rough draft/peer review for essays. When I do rough draft/peer review and follow the methods behind it I end up doing worse than if I just kept with my usual habits. My process just works better for me.So the end result of this is that I’m going to write a six page essay, because if I don’t my grade will be docked (as said in the email). I’m going to give my essay to a bunch of people to look at and have them tell me “well this is crap” or “I would change this”, etc. and then I’m not really going to listen to them and do minor editing the following week. My grade won’t slack because I’ll have followed the same process I would normally, and I’ll just pretend that tomorrow is the deadline for the final draft.Needless to say, this is a crappy day. I wanted to get a lot of writing done today.
Studying Science Fiction Politics: Perhaps
I’m considering doing an independent study course next quarter. My reasoning is this: I already have to take one course that is required that I really don’t care about and since the number of modern literature courses offered (seeing how I’m a modern lit major) are rather crappy, I don’t want to have to take three courses that I hate. So I’ve resolved to considering independent study as an option to do something interesting. I don’t want to discuss race because, quite frankly, I’m not that interested in any subject of race within science fiction beyond tropes of racism and the data I’m collecting for the project I’m working on for this blog (which serves no academic purpose other than to educate myself and anyone else interested on what minority categories look like in the spectrum of science fiction and fantasy). My interest, I think, is in politics. Now, when I say politics I don’t mean in the same sense of the types of politics we encounter in the United States. I’m more interested in the representation of government within science fiction societies, and in particular, dystopian societies. What I’m considering is doing a study of the nature of government within several works of science fiction and perhaps arguing that government acts as a negative force and in some ways is like a corporate entity that uses desperate measures of control to maintain dominance. To put it more simply, I want to argue in a short set of works that government acts like an agent of slavery, using policy and the rule of law to enslave, imprison, and otherwise take complete control over a populace, often under the guise of fear. The most obvious way of taking such a subject on is to include 1984 by George Orwell into the equation, which is a consideration. I’m also considering We by Yevgeny Zamyatin, and perhaps several other novels from the newer period of the last 30 years of science fiction. I’m not sure what works I’ll choose. I could certainly use Neuromancer by William Gibson or Childhood’s End by Arthur C. Clarke, or a myriad of other novels. Needless to say this is still in the works. I’ve just begun to think about it. I think the argument itself is rather interesting, though perhaps somewhat simplistic, which begs the question, what do I do to make it more complex and interesting? We can all think of governmental forces as enslavers, because we have learned or seen the use of government in that manner. So what is it about this interesting subject that makes things complex? Is it that people allow it to exist and don’t take measures to change things? 1984 would say so, since the main character witnesses several times the nature of ‘doublethink’ and even stops himself to ponder it. But he never does anything, he only considers it, except when it’s far too late. It could possibly be assumed that people before him did the same, and the people before those people, for how else could something so wicked that is used as a method of otherwise illegal control gain so much momentum? The same might be said of the people in We where the rules have changed so drastically in the domed, closed-off city that even sex is done by appointment and without preference. Certainly the benefit of having easy selection of the partners you want has benefits, unless you’re the type that wants nothing to do with someone. Such a world leaves no room for choice and nobody truly complains until the end when it is discovered that there’s nothing really wrong with the rest of the world (sort of like The Island with Ewan McGregor). You can imagine, though, being forced into sex by appointment and being required to perform sufficiently, or be docked points or whatever it might be that a government could use to control your enjoyment. And what would you do if you found you liked a particular person and someone else screwed up your plan of only enjoying their company? These are things that are perhaps created by a negligent public, since such policies either came out of nowhere and nobody did anything, or not enough was done and whatever revolution might have occurred simply failed. These are the thoughts in my head on this subject. I don’t know if it will become anything or if I can even find a sponsoring professor to take me on, but I do intend to try and see if I can make it work. It sounds like fun. On to the subject of what books to read: Do you have any recommendations? Anything really, so long as it’s SF. I’m curious to see what you folks think!
Quota Reached: Writing Going Well
Okay, so you might not give a flying fig about this, but so be it. I reached my quota today, and yesterday too (mostly, I generally don’t count when I’m a few words under) and both times have been in this new story I’m writing currently entitled “The Life of Jordan”. I imagine the name will change. I’m writing it for Writers of the Future since I have until the 31st of March to get this bad boy written. It’s going to be on the longer side I think, as in right around the 12,000-word mark. This time it’s SF, while the last time I submitted it was fantasy. Not sure why I’m doing SF this time, but I like the general idea of this story.The interesting thing is that while writing this I’ve had a lot of doubts. Usually I start writing something and I love the story 100% (even the writing) and then as I get closer to the end I start to have doubts. This is turning out to be the opposite. I like the idea of the story, but I’m not sure i like how I’m writing it. It is growing on me, though, and I think maybe it’ll work. I’m going to take it to the end nonetheless to see how it turns out.How about anyone else out there that writes? When you write do you hate the story at first and have it grow on you or the other way around? (Don’t click the read more, there isn’t any more after this!)