Pulling along

Just a quick post, because it’s 3:30 am and I’ve got a TON of stuff to do tomorrow, such as:

1) cleaning checks
2) replace the air filter in my car
3) go running with my bro in law
4) finish Genesis Earth 5.0
5) band practice
6) watch Inception with a bunch of friends at the dollar theater

Yeah, tons of stuff.  So anyways…

I’m amazed at how quickly I’m pulling through Genesis Earth.  Yesterday I revised through 11.7k words, and today I did about 14.1k.

At this point, most of the work is sentence and paragraph level, and has more to do with voice and rhythm than actual story.  There were a few science issues, mostly having to do with distances and velocities, but thanks to Logan I think I’ve caught most of those.  Thanks so much!

I’m also finding out that this story is much better than I used to think it was.  With all the form rejections I’ve been getting for it, I wondered for a while whether I should put it back in the trunk and let it quietly die.  Now, however, I can see that it has a lot more promise than I’d previously thought.  Even if it isn’t published as my first novel, I really do believe that this story deserves a home.

At the same time, though, I’ve noticed some major differences between my writing in this piece and my writing in the stuff I’ve written more recently.  I’m not sure exactly how to put it, but I think it has something to do with voice.  I don’t want to say that Genesis Earth is more choppy, but it does seem a lot more…matter of fact, if that makes sense.  There are also a lot more rhetorical questions, but I think that’s an artifact of the 1st person perspective.

But even if the voice in this piece is different from my voice now, it’s different in a good way.  It feels more…YA?  I’m not exactly sure, but it seems to work.  The sequels, if/when I write them, will probably be in 3rd person (ala Spin and Axis by Robert Charles Wilson), and that’s going to create a much different feel than this book.

It worked for Axis, though, so I think I can pull it off–that is, if/when Genesis Earth gets picked up by a publisher.  I don’t want to write the other two books in this trilogy until I know the first one is sold.

In unrelated news, I had a job interview today.  It was with a wilderness therapy company, the same that wait listed me for the January training.  I really hope I get in–more than anything at this point in my life, I feel that I need to gain some major life experience.  Probably the biggest stumper question was “what three words would you use to describe yourself in your last job, and what three words would your supervisor use to describe you?” A difficult question, particularly when all your recent jobs have been temp jobs.  I think I did alright, though–now, we just need to wait and see.

In other unrelated news, I threw an awesome movie night tonight.  We watched Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, and maybe fifteen people showed up–most of them from Quark, but a couple of friends from some other places too.  Man, that Scott Pilgrim movie is epic. So hilarious, so entertaining, and at the same time, so true.  And then, we went to Dairy Queen and hung out until midnight hanging out.  It was great.

In still other unrelated news, I recently ordered the anime series Planetes on DVD.  It was at a good price, and I knew I’d buy it eventually, so I allowed myself to splurge.  I am so happy I did, because the science fiction elements are done surprisingly well.  All the little details, from the zero gravity handholds in the walls to the way the stations spin, are surprisingly true to real life, and the show’s vision of 2075 is not beyond the realm of our own possible future.  In other words, Planetes is quite possibly the best rocketpunk anime show out there, and a great source for inspiration.

Well, that’s enough for now.  Tomorrow, I will finish this novel and send it out to the agent who requested it.  In the meantime, though, it’s 4:00 am and I must sleep.