Word Barf Wednesday #4

Brainstorming today…

A whole world of people with 6 legs and stabbing blades and mechanical tools on the end of prehensile tools.

Throughout their society they value speed and intuition above verifiable results.

They worship a pantheon of deities, each one related to a different tool that works within the suite in their tails.

They have many factions, but there are no other sophonts on their homeworld. (This is a sci-fi setting–I just decided this). Throughout their history these factions have warred, much like those on earth. Despite this, they have a unified space presence and several major colonies on other worlds.

…

Maybe more later. This post isn’t exactly grabbing me, but sometimes ideas are like that.

The Artist’s Way

I am in the middle of a self-run course from a book called The Artist’s Way. I was recommended this book on the podcast I Should Be Writing by Mur Lafferty, years ago. I’ve tried it once before, last October, but wasn’t able to take it seriously, as its a fairly involved course. Now, though, its serving me well in getting me inspired for writing.

The book itself describes a 12 week course detailing steps to a “creative recover” which is an interesting thing for me to attempt, as I’ve never exactly been stopped as far as my creativity. My creative output on the other hand… I hope the exercises in the book will help me with that.

I’m on week 3 right now, and so far I think its starting to work, despite some difficulties finding time to do the weekly tasks. Anyway, I would encourage anyone who feels blocked as an artist to check this book out. So far each chapter has been quite helpful for differing reasons.

I hope to be back for some word barf tomorrow.

My collector gene

My first ever ‘physical’ copies of a manga arrived in the mail today: Blame!, which I raved about before, volumes 7 and 8, which I think are largely the best of the work, having read it.

Now one might ask: “If you’ve already read it, why did you buy the hard copy?”

The first, and more obvious, answer is I like hard copy. That doesn’t quite get to the heart of the matter, though.

You see, the second answer is that I am a collector. I collect all sorts of things, from books to wargames miniatures, to music recordings, to podcasts, to the serious side of ‘collecting’ my own work in the form of novels as I write them.

Anyway, I got these volumes of Blame! not only because I like them, and I’m a collector. I think they’ll serve as good visual references to help in sparking my imagination toward cyberpunk. I’m beginning to feel more positive about writing again and cyberpunk or post-cyberpunk is a genre of which I’m quite fond.

I don’t have a lot to do this evening, so who knows. Maybe I’ll start soon.

Editing!

So I’ve been editing my 4th full-length manuscript. It’s tough going, just due to the size of the book (96,000 words, not overly long, but still a beast to tackle for revision). This isn’t the first time I’ve edited this book all the way through. I hope it’ll be the last draft before I send it off though.

Here’s hoping to start submitting this month, or early next.

Mistborn: The Hero of Ages Review

I finished reading the final book of the Mistborn trilogy a few weeks ago, but it took me a while to find the time to review it. Short and sweet: I liked it.

A bit more elaborately, I’d say I liked the overall story less than I liked any of the set-piece moments, the iconic moments of this book. Even so the ending, which I won’t spoil here, worked very well for me. Despite that it made me uncomfortable and a bit sad, which is as it should be at the end of epic fantasy, I think.

When one starts with a world as profoundly messed up as the one in Mistborn it feels miraculous that things turn around. The moment this was accomplished in Mistborn 3 was one of the best moments of realization in the whole series for me. You’ll know what I’m talking about should you this story.

And I loved, LOVED, the descriptions and explanations of all the creatures (inquisitors, Koloss, and most notably Kandra) in this series. A very strong ending for a dark series overall. Keep up the good work Mister Sanderson!

Word Barf Wednesday #3… and a bit of a rave

Been outlining for my book all morning. It’s going really well. I’m enjoying the new excel/notepad format I’m working with for notes.

Anyway, here is the word barf. I’m going to use a (http://www.seventhsanctum.com) random generator for this. Basically I’m going to describe the properties of a random result from their theotech generator and its implications in a near-future/20-seconds into the future setting.

The tech is: Eden Architecture.
I’m gonna steer clear of computing. In this case it just seems too obvious to go there.

Building a perfect structure, one that is indestructible seemed impossible until theologians and scientists managed to create a counter to entropy by working together. The result, the Eden Architecture, can be applied to vehicles, and buildings, and even armor.
The Eden Architecture has made space travel more practical, as it is impervious to heat. Militaries without Eden vehicles are easily beaten by those with them. In fact., the indestructible technology has revolutionized war as well as survival technology.

And now for the rave, a Japanese sci-fi manga. Blame!
I honestly didn’t expect this 10 volume manga to impact me that much. I’ve read quite a few good ones before, but Blame is of a vastly different character to all the others I’ve read. It is set in a massive structure that practically IS the story. There is very little dialogue throughout much of this very dark work, but what is there is effective (not flashy, but it works). I am just blown away, even still, and I finished it several weeks ago. Anyway, I recommend Blame wholeheartedly.

I’ll get around to reviewing Mistborn: The Hero of Ages soon too. As for now, I’m happy with the progress I’m making on my own stories for the day.

Writing is tough lately…

Gosh, but I exhaust myself trying to write. I wanted to write 5,000 words today. I’ve written less than 200, and this is not an isolated incident. It has become the norm, for whatever reason. Rather than learning new skills and incorporating them into my repertoire for fiction I just keep getting bogged down in details.

Ever since I went to the amazing Write By the Lake Workshop and took writer Lori Devoti’s scene workshop I’ve written more and more slowly. I don’t blame Lori or the class. In fact, the class did me and my writing a lot of good. The problem I think is a mental block I’ve developed. I’ve become a planner, rather than a writer.

I’ve been saving awesome ideas for novels for so long… and college has definitely made it harder to actually write books while supplying me with dozens of new ideas for them. I can’t seem to keep to a writing schedule, or edit as thoroughly as I should.

I don’t keep looking for quick fixes, and I keep writing outlines and worldbuilding. I don’t think there is a quick fix for this, and worldbuilding and outlines only help if I’m up to the task of actually writing. I just keep stewing in this nonsense, reading writing advice, listening to writing advice, doing anything but writing.

I need to get writing, but I think I’m feeling too much pressure at the ol’ word processor. I’m just stuck in that regard. I feel like I can’t throw stuff away because its too hard to replace it. I’m mired in old projects.

I’m sick and tired of all the work I’ve put into this weighing me down. It’s like I’ve gotten worse at actually writing words the better I’ve gotten at telling stories. I’m not sure why that is, but I’m sure I need a cure. Maybe I need to be more creative in text?

By that last question I mean that perhaps I need to enjoy writing the actual stuff more by indulging more in improving my skills at the sentence or paragraph level? I think it might help, so maybe its down to exercises. I’d welcome any suggestions, but I feel stifled by the people I’ve been living around. I don’t really blame them for this. I’ve been writing for 7.5 years and have been talking about it the whole time. Nobody can sustain interest in someone else’s job when its gets that consistent I’d bet. They’ll play their own games while I play mine. But I seem to be missing the point of my own game lately.

Word Barf Wednesday #2

So here it is, Wednesday again. So in honor of Odin, I think I’ll do a mythology building exercise.

I’ll start with fantasy, a secondary world. I’ll try my best to show my work.
Premodern technology, human species and an earthlike planet are my assumptions. I already feel a little constricted, but lets see. How did this world come to be?
God snaps his fingers? Too simple for my tastes, at least in fiction.
Before that, let me think of what’s different.

We’ll say the tides are extreme. They’re extreme because there are two moons, one larger than Earth’s moon, and the other about the same size. This results in greater instability in the planet’s crust, and a rapidly cycling continents.

A storm of geological proportions. And it all came from… (as you can see I like to work backward for most of this)

A pair of great beasts, sisters. The larger, elder moon, and the smaller, younger moon.

These two are in a dance across the sky, continuous, effortless, influencing the everyday lives of mortals. They are the sky dragons, the gods perhaps, or perhaps not. I choose not.

They each gave birth to a pantheon of deities, and those two groups of greater beings, gods, whatever, are eternally at war. They are at war over which moon mother is greater, and as they fight wars they use humans as proxies because, get this, they can’t actually manifest on the planet themselves. They are the stars perhaps…

…And I wish I had more time to write this. This is gonna have to do, though.

World-Barf Wednesday #1

I am going to attempt to exorcise my world-building demons for the week. Here it goes.

So this setting is fantasy.
That means maybe urban or secondary world, or maybe post-apocalyptic.
I think urban is a good start. So what’s the magic? What’s the creatures?
Are magic/creatures overt or covert?

For magic I’ll say ethereal magic that originates from named locations. The more important/famous a place is, the more powerful the magic granted to the people who knows how to use it. Problem is, learning about the magic isn’t enough. One also has to know the place intimately… probably better than anyone else. Yeah, so only one person can use the magic. The keeper of that place. The keeper of a house, or an office building, or a city…

Magic systems feel better to me with limitations, so I’ll list few for this one:
-A keeper only has as much power as the fame of the place
-A keeper can’t use magic without an object that ties them to the place somehow (like a cell phone, or a radio receiver/transmitter that connects something inside)
-Every time a keeper uses this magic a creature is created… a gremlin or a bogeyman type critter, and it is malignant and haunts the MC

I think that’ll do for limitations, and look now I’ve got creatures to play around with:
bogeymen. I think I could go on, but I’ll leave it there for now.

Finally getting worldbuilding stuff out there…

So I wrote a 700 word overview of a planet it broad terms today. I had fun. It wasn’t the sort of writing I’d show to others, but I had fun. So here’s a few things I’ve learned about writing lately.

1. I devour writing advice. I listen to podcasts, read blogs, read books, analyze the entrails of chickens… I love doing it (except when chickens are involved). The downside is I get deadened to the ideas. I usually listen to music when writing. Lesson: More music, less writing advice.

2. Worldbuilding is more useful to me when written out in paragraph form. I like bullet-points and systems and lists, but they aren’t good for breaking ideas out into COMPELLING parts. They break them DOWN into simpler parts.

3. I haven’t gotten that much slower as a writer since I started leaping ahead in quality. I simply think more. That means more outlining may be necessary.

4. The spreadsheet works for my outline. I think I’ll stick with these over mindmapping tools like Freemind. Fooling around with that software is too much trouble at the moment.

5. I want to write longer stuff/sequels. I feel ready, and I’ve had a lot of practice with the smaller novels.

6. I still need to work on short stories. Compressing story information is a good thing, a powerful tool to have. I greatly wish to master it.

7. Writing can be a joy, but I don’t necessarily want to jump on the difficult parts all the time. Removing pressure and being confident improves quality 9 times out of 10.

As with all writing advice, these are true for me. Make use of them at your own risk.