Looking to 2013

I may be guilty of following blog trends too closely. For example, today I'm going to go along with the "Word of the Year" thing.

First I get to decide what 2012's word was. I suppose "Transformation" would be the most fitting one. This gets into a bit more of the personal stuff, but at the beginning of the year I was content with who I was and hoping that some miracle would help me make a giant leap. It wasn't until the last few months that I decided that I had to become someone much greater, and start putting in the real work. Because of that, I actually have New Year's Resolutions this year, which I'll get to later.

Next, I'd better come up with a word for 2013. Unfortunately, I don't think the English language really has one word for going all-out, giving it everything I've got, doing everything I can without holding back. I kind of wonder why that word doesn't exist, but if it did, it would be my new word. (Correct me in the comments if there IS a word that I didn't think of!)

So that brings us to what I'm expecting myself to do with all of that. In fact, I'm expecting a lot of things, so I'm just going to make a list.

• Finish and publish both The Third Face and its sequel, The Demon's Guardian.
• Make 3 blog posts every week, including a Drabble Thursday, for at least 40 weeks of the year. (Try to get one or two in during the other 12 weeks, too.)
• Read a book every week. No exceptions.
• Beta read 4 novels.
• And all the non-writing goals too...

Yeah. It's a lot. I have some hard work ahead of me. I don't expect to accomplish all of them, but I ought to at least get pretty close. I'm going to keep at it every day. I'm serious. Like I said, no holding back.

Review: Leven Thumps and the Gateway to Foo

Every adventure can use a bit of comedy, some silly moments. It pops up more in movies than in books, though there are some exceptions. In Leven Thumps, silly moments are the mainstay of the story.

Although Leven, the titular character, starts off with a tragic cookie-cutter backstory (an orphan that lives with mean relatives), the laughs are quickly forthcoming. The jokes start with a simple incident of a supposed pest causing a large group of people to panic and knock each other over, but eventually the fate of Foo is resting on a talking toothpick!

Speaking of fate, it plays a huge role in the plot. Things that might normally be considered ridiculous coincidences are always pointed out as the working of fate, which always seems to be on the heroes' side. You can always count on this, so eventually it kind of kills the fear that the characters might fail, and in fact you might find that some of their accomplishments just can't be awarded to them in that light.

One might argue that this is completely necessary, though, because the characters have more than just the villain to worry about. Leven spends the entire book beset by shadows that convince him that it's not worth it to join this cause--either because he can't help, or because it's not justified. The other characters spend as much time dealing with this as they do on their quest, if not more. Although his doubts don't really originate in his own mind, it's still one of the stronger character arcs I've read.

Reading Leven Thumps is a lot like watching a children's cartoon or anime. If you can stop trying to make sense of it and just enjoy the ride, there's a lot of fun to be had.

Review: Ender's Game

Wow. Where can I possibly begin with a book like this one?

Ender is chosen, or perhaps created, by the international government's search for a fleet commander. Even in normal school, they single him out until he has to get in fights with other kids in order to make it. But the real test comes when he's only six years old, when they send him out into space to join Battle School.

There, Ender advances far faster than anyone else ever has, rarely getting even a small taste of failure. The teachers are constantly messing with things to push him to his limits. Not only does he improve himself, but he teaches an entire generation of students a whole new way of thinking that vastly improves their skills. With his genius he starts to change the nature of the no-gravity shootout games that determine students' rankings.

And it's in these games that you start to really respect Orson Scott Card's writing. At first he skims through situations because these are no challenge for Ender, but even there you can see the beginnings of strategy. In fact, the things you see Ender learning make you wonder if Card hasn't spent a bit of time in space himself! If battles seem a bit far away, it's because you're looking at them through a tactician's eyes.

This is to say nothing of the big pile of moral dilemmas and other thought-provoking questions that are hidden in the text. Is Ender anything like his calculating, pain-loving brother Peter? And if so, is it because of who he is, or because Battle School made him that way? And most importantly, is it right to want to get rid of the invading alien force at all?

Card purposely leaves all of these questions without a clear answer, and that only adds to the depth of this work. It gives an effect that I rarely see in any other book: it has that "literary" quality to it, but it's also a fast-paced adventure that keeps you reading.

So there's definitely a good reason Ender's Game is the science fiction classic that it's considered to be. It's the Book of the Month for December 2012 over at West Michigan Sci-Fi and Fantasy Fans, if that means anything. If you haven't read it yet, give it a shot--you might start to look at things in a new way.

Drabble Thursdays #3

Wow, this week's stories are overwhelmingly dark. Maybe next week I'll have some happier ones.

DISCLAIMER: Drabbles may suck.

Cover Art Contest

I've been kind of talking about doing a cover art contest for The Third Face for a while now. While I originally mentioned that I might have it right after the actual novel is finished, I decided that I want to start much sooner, to give artists more time to discover the contest and work on entries.

So, the contest officially begins today, and will last until February 24th, 2013. That's just over two months, and in that time I'd like to promote it as much as possible, so if you have friends that are cover artists, definitely invite them to enter! There's a $50 prize at stake, not to mention the fact that I'll broadcast the winner and do my best to give the artist the exposure he or she deserves. There will most likely also be free books involved.

I'm leaving the contest more or less open-ended. The site with all of the contest information includes a decent helping of information on the book itself, as well. It should give you an idea of what elements you might include. From there, though, everything from the medium to the composition is up to the artist.

 Sound interesting? Think a friend might be up to it? Here's the link. Hope to see that entry soon!

The Revision Journey

 When asked exactly what I was doing in revising The Third Face, I realized that I didn't have an answer. It's kind of like how a lot of inexperienced authors freeze up when they have to explain to someone what their novel is actually about (I had that for a long time and I'm just now overcoming it). Today, I'm going to try to actually answer that question.

Basically, I had three major goals in mind for this edition: to make it significantly longer, to re-center the book on Rasuke as a main character with clear growth, and to get rid of some other major plot issues that were bogging down the first edition.

If you're not too familiar with word counts, this might not mean anything to you, but before, The Third Face clocked in at about 25,000 words. To give you an idea, a lot of people claim that 50,000 words is barely enough to qualify as a novel. A young adult or teen novel can sometimes get away with as little as 30,000, but most readers expect more. In fact, in the paperback version, I used spacing and other cheap tricks to make the book appear bigger than it really was. That's bad, I know. Rather than hiding its skimpiness, I want to actually make it a good length, and my minimum target for it is 40,000 words. (You can see that right now on my little progress bar on the left side of the page!)

Another thing that I tried to do in earlier versions was to just not take traditional story structure seriously. At all. There's no reason for that. I just wasn't really paying attention. And it turns out that you can't just have a bunch of things happening that are related, throw in a few plot twists and lead up to a final battle and call it good. In a story like this one there is a hero, who beats personal challenges more or less at the same time as external ones. There's an overarching conflict that is built from caring what happens to this hero, and that slowly emerges at the beginning and carries all the way to the end. All subplots need to take a backseat to this. Thus, almost all of my jumps in perspective this time around function mainly to support the journey of Rasuke to self-understanding, and into his confrontation with the forces of the universe.

What else did I do to the story in the meantime? For one thing, there aren't as many major jumps in time as there were before. Whereas originally the prologue took place several years before Part 1, which in turn was a few years before Part 2, now these events are either made to happen one right after another, or presented in flashbacks. On the other hand, I eliminated a lot of the times when the characters are simply waiting around for something to happen to them, brooding on the many questions of the world and arguing with each other. Finally, I made sure that all of the main characters are properly introduced in the first ten chapters, rather than giving them only passing mentions until they suddenly appeared much later on.

It's amazing how this all comes together. There are a lot of other details that I'm messing with while I'm at it, but these important things are the focus of my work right now. I've been trying to get out a chapter every day, and to get around 1000 words out of each one. While I haven't been able to do that perfectly all the time, the fact remains that this story is hurtling towards completion faster than I could have dreamed. The end is a lot closer than you might think! I hope this post holds you over until then.

Drabble Thursdays #2

Time for a few more of these!

DISCLAIMER: Drabbles may suck.

The Bandwagon of the 12

The whole 12/12/12 thing is apparently a pretty big deal, and apparently a lot of people are doing special things as celebration. One blogger I saw had the idea of posting the 12th page of her novel today. So I thought, why not do the same? Thus, here you go, a bit of the new edition of The Third Face.

Review: The Amber Spyglass

I've got to review more books in this blog. In two years all I've reviewed were a textbook, and the first two books in the His Dark Materials trilogy. And only today will I get to the final book in Phillip Pullman's trilogy: The Amber Spyglass.

Although the first two books impressed me, in light of this book they served as mere introductions to it. The jump in length is appropriate, because there's so much more going on now! Now that we've met Will and Lyra, and gotten a good idea of the concepts underlying this world, it's time for a real struggle.

As predicted, the philosophical undertones of this work are pretty strong. Pullman explores the afterlife and the intelligence of matter, among other things. He even presents us with a world in which four-legged creatures have a diamond-shaped body structure, and birds have one wing on the front and the other on the back!

I was much happier with the character development here. Both characters are starting to learn what they need to do, and you can see them both in terms of each other. Their relationship is really what drives the story, alongside the twisting intrigue of the adults in the story, particularly Mrs. Coulter, who is as untrustworthy to everyone as ever.

Pullman continued to keep me hooked by pushing imagination to its limits without making anything feel the least bit implausible. I have to say, I really was not expecting the direction this story ended up going in. While everything called for the characters to hurry up and jump to the final battle, they defied that and took a different route entirely, one that kept me guessing right until the end.

Now I'm going to go a little more in-depth about this here, but be warned: the rest of this review will spoil the book!

Drabble Thursdays #1

Today we get some of the first drabbles I've written. In the beginning I obviously had no idea what I was doing, but then I started warming up to it. Have a look!

DISCLAIMER: Drabbles may suck.

Warm-Ups: Daily Drabbles

A drabble is a story that's exactly 100 words. Simple as that.

A friend of mine encouraged me to start writing them as a possible way to ease into writing communities. I don't usually write short stories, and I know a lot of people aren't going to invest their time in looking into a full-length novel unless they're sure about the author. That's where this started out: just a source of a few little stories.

I changed them into something else: a warm-up for my real writing. As I mentioned a few days ago, my intention for the next couple of months is to write a chapter of The Third Face every single day (except maybe Christmas). That mission is going rather well, and part of it is that I have started each writing day by writing a drabble.

Because each story is very short, I rarely invest a lot of time or thought into them (today's was rather silly in fact). They're just enough to say I have some amount of writing done for the day, and they get that part of my brain going just a little bit. They don't intimidate me the same way 1000 words does, and once I've done them I can't exactly say I'm taking a vacation from writing for the day!

This is a fun little thing that I definitely won't mind making a more long-term habit of. In fact, I've decided to post the results of it each week here on the blog, in a new event called Drabble Thursdays. (I chose Thursday simply because that's when I wrote the first one.) I hope to see you all here for the first week's worth!

Expanding Art

A couple of things just happened. First, Melanie Rio at Ink Out Loud (a great blog by the way) made this post about finding other ways of expressing creativity, and how valuable that is to keep away frustration while writing. Then, an old buddy of mine brought up the old days when we wanted to start a band, and he said that this time we need to actually go through with it.

Connections. I don't believe in coincidence.

For basically my whole high school career, my dream job was "Author/Musician." I had dreams of being a rock star, actually. This time it's not quite like that. I just want to make the music and produce something worth listening to. Needless to say, I've taken a step in the creative, artistic direction in that respect. Fame and fortune are right out.

That's kind of the attitude we have to have if we want to juggle more than one thing here. I believe in setting goals high, sure, but it's one thing to be focused on that goal and another to try and have two. I could be a rock star, but I'd have to put down my other ambitions and start putting my everything into that, and that's not what I want. I want my everything to be in writing, and it is. The music is just a hobby (although having that freedom of soundtrack for book trailers and such could be a perk!)

What I'm trying to say is, know where you stand, and how many tasks you can handle. Because the more you have, the greater the temptation is to give one up. Like Melanie said, don't force yourself into doing the things that are supposed to be fun. Keep them up as long as it continues to make sense for you to do so. Using limits to make things into a reward is even better, and with more than one creative outlet going on at the same time, that concept can be used even more effectively!

Don't be afraid to break away for a bit. Sometimes, that's all you need to get the thirst back.

Cycles

Someone asked me why my final blog post for NaNoWriMo was just moving on to the future like that, and why I never really stopped to reflect on how great this November was.

Hey, November has been my favorite month for the last five years, ever since I discovered this program. And I still get just as much out of it as everyone else does. Unfortunately, since I know I can't make it to a "Thank God It's Over" party, I haven't really had any encouragement to express my excitement. I guess that's always how it's been--halfway into December people go, "Oh hey did you ever finish that novel?" (Besides, I'm already being flooded by everyone else's long reactions to the month, and I don't want to be repetitive!)

It's more than that, though, I think. It has to do with my personal thoughts about progress and accomplishment. Yes, this is probably going to get a little philosophical, but hear me out.

What's just happened is kind of like a vacation. When you go on vacation, everything else in life is kind of put on hold for a bit, as best you can manage. But it's not gone. It's waiting for you as soon as you get home, and it might even be a bit tougher while you catch up to things!

Or you could compare it to getting your dream job. When that happens, you certainly feel triumphant, and you celebrate. Then after that, it's time to actually go to work. You're excited, you get a good feel for it, and then, if it really is your dream job, you probably set out to have some kind of success at it, right? You have a new goal, and you move on to it, but it builds on your last goal that you accomplished.

For me, finishing NaNoWriMo is both of these things. It's both a return to normal life from something really enjoyable, and something to celebrate in its own right, but ultimately I have to move on to the next goal beyond that. Does that mean I'll never be satisfied? Maybe. But I feel like everything I do is building up to something really amazing. One day it's going to add up to an amazing collection of books. And that's a goal worth striving for.