Just another daily update on my writing progress:
3,000 words today, done in about three hours up at the LRC. Yeah, that’s a lot–but I also didn’t write at all yesterday. Basically, I’m caught up to where I wanted to be after President’s day–which is maybe 40,000 to 60,000 words from the end.
There’s still a lot to do. Leila knows that she loves Ian, but Ian doesn’t really know that he loves her. Or something like that. So, I’ve got to tie that loose end together. Also, I’ve got to throw in the aliens–I’ve tried to foreshadow them, but now I’ve got to put it all together, and that might require going back and changing some things. I’m a little bit worried that these characters aren’t curious enough–that strange things are happening and they’re not thinking enough about them. But we’ll see. Plus, I still have to add in the occupation of the planet–make the natives get all oppressed and that by the colonists. And then throw in some references to the Federation of Humanity, and…
Holy cow, there’s really a lot left for me to do! I really hope I can get it all done by April 25th. I think I will–in fact, I’ll probably have it finished a month early. That’s what I’m shooting for, at least. We’ll see if I can do it.
I’ve noticed that it gets really difficult to write when you approach the end of a story. I’m definitely past the halfway mark by now, and it’s really hard to just put my butt in the chair and get to work. It’s also really hard to get it to flow. When I hold down ctrl-z after writing for a while, I realize that most of my writing process consists of writing a word, deleting it, writing a new word, deleting it, writing a phrase and keeping it, writing another word, then deleting the whole sentence and starting again from scratch. It’s harder just to get stuff out and keep it there.
Another thing that I really worry about at this time is that this story is becoming melodramatic. There is some really big stuff happening, but it’s hard for me to have the big picture perspective and say “yeah, this needs to be toned down more” or “this stuff is ok, needs more emphasis.” Also, the line between high sf/f and melodrama is kind of blurry. But I’m not going to worry about it for now. Just need to finish the rough draft…
The story for 318 is going pretty well, I think. I got a surprising amount of positive feedback on this week’s segment. I think I’ve found a good style to write it in–short, quick, and very terse. Very much unlike The Lost Colony. 🙂
As far as other writing goes, I met with one of the writing fellows to discuss a paper for PLSC 310 today, and I was kind of surprised to hear that he thought it was really strong. Since the rough draft was pass-fail, I spat it out in about two or three hours without revising it or trying to make it good. What’s more, this writing fellow is actually really sharp–he gave me a lot of help, both in understanding the assignment and in writing strategies. I don’t know for sure if my creative writing has helped to strengthen my academic writing, but I suspect that it has. I’ll revise that paper tomorrow morning and really make it stellar.
One more interesting thing–I’m starting a job at the BYU bookstore at the end of the week! I’ll be working stockroom delivery, which I hear is kind of the jack-of-all-trades job at the bookstore. The main reason I’m doing this is to raise enough money to pay for round trip plane tickets from Jordan to Boston, so I can see my sister’s wedding while I’m studying abroad, but it may also be really helpful in developing some contacts in the writing/publishing world–especially in the LDS fiction market. Once you’re in the BYU bookstore, it’s really easy to get a job anywhere else in the store, so if I see the opportunity to network I can probably put myself in a good position to do it. And if not, at least I’ll have the money I need for those plane tickets.
The interesting thing is that one of the questions they asked in the job interview was “give an example of how you’ve used goal setting to accomplish something,” or something along those lines. I actually used my writing this novel as an example of that. I said “well, I really enjoy creative writing, and back in the summer I decided to write a novel. First, I set an end goal–have the rough draft finished by April 25th. Then, I set daily goals to help me out along the way. I didn’t get hung up on whether or not I’d made those goals–since, after all, goals aren’t there to make you happy or sad, they’re there as tools to help you accomplish some end. If I missed my goal for one day, I simply made it up the next day. Now, I’m doing really well, and I think I may actually accomplish my end goal a month ahead of schedule.”
Yeah! Way to rock an interview question!
And now that I’ve finished boring Drek, I’ll link to something fun and interesting. In fact, I’ll link to something insanely hilarious that Danke from the writing group showed me a while ago. My greatest ambition: I would be aller strong and big than anyone. Enjoy the backstroke of the west!
