Man, so much has been happening, but now that I’m working an eight to five job, I never have the time to blog about it. It’s 2am and I’m running on only four hours of sleep from the previous night. Oh well, it’s a weekend. Here goes.
I passed the 50k mark for the rewrite of Mercenary Savior. I’m surprised how much I’m changing the draft. I’m especially finding a lot of slow chapter beginnings and thinly veiled expository lumps–not of scene descriptions so much as worldbuilding. Gotta remember the iceberg concept (to only include about ten percent or less of your worldbuilding in your story’s narrative).
I interviewed a few more people for the article on the “class that wouldn’t die.” Good stuff, all around. I met with Cara O’Sullivan today, and she had a very interesting comment about why there are so many LDS writers of science fiction and fantasy.
In her opinion, Mormon literary culture tends to push the more talented writers into sf&f because of the extreme lack of freedom in other genres of LDS writing. In mainstream and literary LDS fiction, there are so many expectations for the writers: for example, that the story will have a clear message, or that it will contain a certain brand of Mormon sentimentalism, etc. In science fiction and fantasy, OTOH, there’s much more freedom; therefore, LDS writers tend to gravitate that way.
I also had a phone interview for the wilderness job last Thursday. I think it went well, but we’ll find out at the end of the month, I suppose. Questions that caught me off guard include: “how do you define success?” and “how would you respond to something you heard secondhand about an employee from another shift?”
Finally, I recently got hooked on an old abandonware DOS game called Princess Maker 2. It is so freaking awesome. Basically, you are the father of this ten year old girl, and you have to raise her from childhood to adulthood.
There are so many possible ways to do this: build her fighting skills and send her on adventures, build her artistic skills and have her win dancing/painting contests, build her refinement and send her to court to build her social reputation, etc etc. There are over 70 different possible endings, including some really weird and crazy ones!
And yes, I know, it seems strange that I’d go for a game this girly–but dude, you have no idea until you try it out. It’s like being a father, but with magic and knights and dragons and stuff! So totally awesome!
The flipside is that I spent almost the entire day playing this game. Yeah…still got in 2.5k words, but I was hoping to put in somewhere around 6k or 7k. Man, I haven’t been this addicted since Alpha Centauri. Will it last? I don’t think it will, but then again, I don’t know. The bigger question is whether this is a game I can play in moderation (like Star Control II). I certainly hope it is, but I don’t know.
In the meantime, I’ve got five weeks to write 70k words. Lets go!
That is hilarious that you like that game!
But I’m not gonna lie, I really want to play it, too…
I’m eager to read this article. I think the process of researching it is cool enough, but it’ll be a nice read when it’s done.
Are you taking Sanderson’s class in January, btw?
Beware of addictions. It can be a real vice.