I just recently moved in to a homestay, where I’ll be living with an Arab family until the end of the summer. You can read about it on my other blog. It’s nice to have a routine now, because I have time in the evenings to go on my computer and write.
The Wormhole Paradigm (I’m going to change that horrible title…ugh) is currently at 16,000 words, and I’m finally caught up to where I was by the end of English 318. There is still a LOT to work on, though, and a lot of this applies to The Lost Colony (gotta change that title too) as well. Here are some of my thoughts:
Brandon Sanderson gave me an A- on the final (I should publish all of his comments on here sometime…if I get the time), and he had some very interesting and useful things to say. He felt that the writing and usage of language was really strong, and that I’ve got a good grasp of how to build characters, develop tension, etc, but he said that I need to work on putting more ideas into the things I write. In other words, I need to have more original, imaginative, new ideas / takes on things per each page than I do, in his opinion.
I can definitely see what he’s saying. These two novels, while they have some interesting ideas, borrow a lot from old sci fi cliches. I felt that way when I finished The Lost Colony–that I was tired, and when an issue came up, I would just wave my hand and fall back on something familiar. I really feel like I didn’t think through the native culture very well in that novel, and when I do the rewrite, that’s something I need to do.
I guess it’s because I figure out what’s moving the story as I write it. The same thing is happening with The Wormhole Paradigm. I write for a while, a lot of it isn’t that good, I realize I have to reconceptualize things, I find a really cool idea that I think can drive the story, I rewrite the whole thing with that idea in place, and at the end of all that I realize that it’s actually about something else.
Shoot.
But I’m tired of going back and rewriting things without finishing them. I believe firmly in getting your writing down on paper before you try to tear it apart, and that’s what I’m going to try to do with The Wormhole Paradigm, even though I can tell that there are a lot of things that I need to change, even after rewriting and reconceptualizing it from the beginning.
I’ve noticed, specifically, that I do a lot more telling than showing. I’ll write, from the first person, “this is the way I’ve always felt all my life” instead of coming up with some stories or anecdotes from his life to show the way things have been all his life. That part is harder, because it requires more thought–more worldbuilding. Ya salaam, worldbuilding can be hard work! So instead, I naturally fall back into the exposition thing, without realizing it.
I think that Dave Wolverton did an excellent job showing instead of telling in On My Way To Paradise. One of the things I loved the most about that excellent novel was that every other page, the main character was telling another story from his life to get across some point. He would tell really short stories from his personal experiences growing up in South America, and they would tie in like miniature parables to the things he was struggling with in the present. It was way cool. That’s what I’ve got to do in my own writing–at least more than I have been doing.
Besides that, I’ve noticed that a lot of my readers (I’m using livejournal to get feedback on The Wormhole Paradigm as I write it, but a profile different than the English 318 one) are confused at the beginning. This makes me think that I have to do a better job setting things up than I have been. It’s all very obvious in my mind, because I’ve rewritten this story several times, but it’s not clear in the readers’ minds because the current draft is all they have.
I’d better stop and post this now because I have to go to class, but all of this points to the fact that I have a lot to work on. And it’s not discouraging at all, because I know I can do it, it’s just a bit exhausting. I want to finish the rough draft of The Wormhole Paradigm while I’m here in Jordan, but it’s going to be a lot of work…and it’s not my first priority.
It is a priority, however. If I can do about 1,000 words a week, that will PROVE that I can be at least a part time writer (if I haven’t proven that already :p).
