These past few weeks, I’ve been killing myself trying to write Ashes of the Starry Sea. I’ve made some good progress, as you can see on the sidebar. Today I broke 200 pages. Not too bad.
However, the pace has just been killing me. 4k words per day is something I can do…but 4k words per day on the same project? It’s burning me out.
What’s more, to keep up the pace, I’ll have to put all my other projects completely on hold for the month of July. That, or write MORE than 4k per day, which would be excruciatingly painful.
So I looked at my calendar tonight and figured that if I pushed back my self-imposed deadline for Ashes to the weekend before school starts, I can cut my daily wordcount in that book in half. 2k per day in Ashes–not bad. That I can do.
What’s more, with the other 2k, I’ll have enough room to work on my other projects, Genesis Earth 3.0 and Bringing Stella Home 2.0. I’m starting to get really excited for those, very motivated. For Bringing Stella Home, I’m practically chomping at the bit. I want to make that story shine!
Inshallah, juggling two projects at a time will be helpful, not harmful. During the school year, when I was juggling work, school, and writing, it didn’t work. Now, however, with writing the only major obligation, I’m hoping that two projects will help keep my creative mind fresh, if that makes sense. When I get burned out on Ashes at 2pm, I can switch to Genesis Earth and work on something that excites me. When I get burned out on that at 9pm, I’ll be excited about Ashes again. Etc etc.
Besides, if I want to be a professional writer, project juggling is an important skill I’ll need to learn. Inshallah, I’ll get it to work this time.
Wow! If all goes according to plan, I’ll have all three novels finished and polished before school starts at the end of August! July to write Genesis Earth 3.0, August to write Bringing Stella Home 2.0, and both months to finish Ashes of the Stary Sea 2.1. Yeah!
In other news, Charlie finished Warbreaker by Brandon Sanderson and reviewed it on her blog. I was also reading Warbreaker, but about 200 pages in found that it just wasn’t working for me. I’ll probably finish it someday, but for now, it’s on hold.
I hate to say anything bad about it, since Brandon has been something of a mentor to me (and his Mistborn books are some of the best fantasy that I’ve read!), but I shared many of Charlie’s complaints with the book.
The biggest thing, however, was the way he fell into long, frequent info dumps about the world. Every time, I felt that it stopped the action and jolted me out of the story, like reading a college textbook. The world was okay, but the way he presented it just didn’t work for me.
That, and the way the characters acted. When Siri got carted off near the beginning to be the wife of the God king, the fact that she hardly showed any fear or anxiety about have sex with the guy just threw me out. She was just like “oh, well,” and was nervous about everything else EXCEPT for the sex part. From then on, I had believability issues with her character.
Finally, let me just say that when I write my steampunk flower novel, I want to make one of the characters a Circassian janissary. I just think it would be really cool to put a Circassian in the book, as either a good guy or a bad guy (or, more likely, a grey-area guy). If you’re wondering what I’m talking about, check out the video below:
I see where you (and Charlie) are coming from on the Warbreakerr thing. I had a different experience with the book. Perhaps it was because I read it before Mistborn, or because I read it before I knew anything about writing. In any case, I thought the book was fantastic. I think part of the reason there seems to be many who don’t like it is because they were expecting something like Mistborn, and that’s not what Warbreaker is.
Don’t take the analogy too far, but I’d imagine that lots of people reacted similarly to Speaker for the Dead, expecting it to be an exciting semi-military SF story, but finding it instead to be an emotional, humanistic drama instead.
Warbreaker was admittedly less exciting than Mistborn–in essence, it wasn’t epic, there were no heists, etc. I thought some of the issues he addressed–power and responsibility, sacrifice, intolerance, war and peace–were done very well. For example, I felt like I learned a lot about tolerance not only because Vivenna was incredibly intolerant, but also because Sanderson made me intolerant of her intolerance, which is a little two-faced.
But I guess I read books more for character, plot, and theme than for world-building anyways, so the near-info-dumpish style and the less exciting magic system were only minor marks off in my book.
Sorry for the long comment.
My biggest dislike of Warbreaker is that there was so much politics, and I’m just not that interested in politics.
And I guess I didn’t see things the way you did, because I thought Siri was plenty worried about the sex.