The more I write, the more I’ve come to realize that in order to finish a novel, you have to rediscover something powerful about the story that motivates you to tell it. The thing that motivates you to start the story is rarely the thing that drives you to finish it. Around the second half… Continue reading The second wind of inspiration
Author: Joe Vasicek
Joe Vasicek is the author of more than twenty science fiction books, including the Star Wanderers and Sons of the Starfarers series. As a young man, he studied Arabic and traveled across the Middle East and the Caucasus. He claims Utah as his home.
4k a day
It’s late, but I really need to write something of my recent thoughts on this blog, so this is going to be a stream-of-consciousness word-vomit sort of post. But please keep reading, it probably won’t be uninteresting. I haven’t been posting much on this blog recently, but I’ve been thinking a lot about my writing… Continue reading 4k a day
“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… Continue reading “That’s what it looks like when the infection sets in.”
CONduit 2009 mp3s
I was fortunate enough to attend CONduit 2009 this weekend, up in Salt Lake. It was a ton of fun, and very educational and inspiring as well; I’ll sum up more of my thoughts and impressions from the con later. I recorded most of the panels I attended, and I’ve linked to the full mp3s… Continue reading CONduit 2009 mp3s
Spin by Robert Charles Wilson
What would you do if you knew that the world was going to end in the next thirty years? That one day, before the end of your natural lifespan, the oceans will boil and the forests burst into flames, and life on this planet will come to an end? That you, your children, and even… Continue reading Spin by Robert Charles Wilson
Was Jane Austen a man?
Okay, okay, don’t worry, I know the answer to this question. But in five hundred or a thousand years, will people be so certain? We question the true authorship of Shakespeare’s works. Some of us even question whether Jesus Christ was a real human being, or just a fiction that some religious group invented.… Continue reading Was Jane Austen a man?
13,837 words in a day?
Yeah, that’s right. Believe it or not, I barreled through about 13,837 words today. That’s thirteen THOUSAND, not thirteen hundred. Now, only about a thousand of that was new stuff that I was writing. Most of the rest of it was rearranging scenes that I’d already written, touching them up only a tiny bit. I… Continue reading 13,837 words in a day?
New directions
This past week, I’ve been going through Bringing Stella Home at quite a good clip. I’m going through the rough draft as I had it at the end of April, making some major revisions that hopefully are going to make it easier to write the middle section. I’ve been going along at a good clip,… Continue reading New directions
Ugh. Just ugh.
Man, it was hard to write. So hard, I only just finished, and it’s 1:30 am. Ugh. The reason it was hard was because the character’s reactions in this scene needed to be totally revamped. That also necessitated a complete shift in the structure of the writing, because the rough draft consisted almost entirely of… Continue reading Ugh. Just ugh.
Getting into it
Three days into Bringing Stella Home 1.1 and I’m really getting into it. I’ve reworked the first and second chapters a ton. It’s coming along surprisingly well, considering I was just about ready to throw in the towel a month ago. So far I’m over 12,000 words into the story, which shows up on the progress bar as… Continue reading Getting into it